Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Despite the ravings of sex positive feminists the hookup
culture has always been bad for women.

You knew it would not last. However much they were beguiled
by feminist teaching women would eventually come to their senses and say no to
random, anonymous sexual encounters.

For their part feminists seem have understood that championing hookups was
bad for the brand. They had to do something.

To save the brand they decided that they had to shut down
the hookup culture. So, feminists redefined hookups and declared them to be violent
sexual assaults. Women who hooked up were so out of it, so drunk or drugged
that they could not offer affirmative consent.

With this single gesture, feminists also moved to defend the
honor of the young women they had encouraged to hook up. Unsurprisingly, they
did it by depriving women of responsibility for their actions and blaming it
all on men.

Heather MacDonald has offered the most thoughtful evaluation
of this cultural pivot in the Weekly Standard:

The
ultimate result of the feminists’ crusade may be the same as if they were
explicitly calling for a return to sexual modesty: a sharp decrease in casual,
drunken sex. There is no downside to this development.

In truth, however, this new attitude does produce victims.
It produces male victims. A woman who regrets her actions may petition for
redress because the man should have known that she was incapable of making a
rational decision.

MacDonald suggests, quite correctly, that the new Puritanism
empowers men to an unheard of level. It assumes that they are mind-readers. It
tasks them with guarding a woman’s honor even if said woman has no regard for
it herself.

Examine a case of “rape” at Occidental College. MacDonald
recounts it in maddening detail:

The
freshman complainant, Jane Doe (a pseudonym), began her weekend drinking binge
on Friday, September 6, 2013. She attended a dance party in the dorm room of
John Doe, another freshman whom she had just met, and woke up the next morning
with a hangover. She soon began “pregaming” again—that is, drinking before an
event at which one expects to drink further. Jane drank before a daytime soccer
game and continued during the evening, repeatedly swigging from a bottle of
orange juice and vodka which she had prepared. Around midnight, she went to a
second party in John Doe’s dorm room, still drinking vodka. John, too, had been
drinking all day. Jane removed her shirt while dancing with John and engaged in
heavy petting on his bed, sitting on top of him and grinding her hips. Jane’s
friends tried to shepherd her home, but before she left John’s room, she gave
him her cell phone number so that they could coordinate their planned sexual
tryst.

When
she arrived at her own dorm room, John texted her: “The second that you away
from them, come back.” Jane responded: “Okay.” John wrote back: “Just get back
here.” Jane responded: “Okay do you have a condom.” John replied: “Yes.” Jane
texted back: “Good, give me two minutes.” John texted: “Knock when you’re
here.”

Before
leaving her dorm room, Jane texted a friend from back home: “I’m going to have
sex now.” Jane walked down to John’s room at approximately 1 a.m., knocked on
his door, went in, took off her earrings, got undressed, performed oral sex,
and had sexual intercourse with him. When an acquaintance knocked on John’s
door to check up on her, Jane three times called out: “Yeah, I’m fine.” Shortly
before 2 a.m., Jane dressed herself and returned to her room. On her way there,
she texted her friends vapid messages, complete with smiley faces, none of
which mentioned assault. She then walked to a different dorm where she sat on
the lap of another male student whom she had met the night before, talking and
joking. The next day she texted John asking if she had left her earrings and
belt in his room and asked to come by to pick them up.

I will leave it to you to decide whether or not this was a
rape.

By all appearances, the man in question had every reason to
believe that the woman was a consenting participant in their bacchanalian
revelry. Upon reflection, upon feeling diminished by her actions and upon
noting that her male partner did not feel the same way, the coed decided
otherwise.

Note well: this young women just discovered that men and
women are not the same and that they do not respond the same way to sex. You
might consider this to be an epiphany. In fact, the woman decided that it was
the sign that a crime had taken place and that she had been victimized.

As always, feminism teaches women to read human experience
within a guilt culture narrative of crime and guilt.

Apparently, the woman’s college felt her pain. The result:

And yet
Occidental, under investigation from the Obama administration for ignoring
sexual violence (a baseless charge), found John guilty of assault and expelled
him. Though Jane’s actions and statements seemed to indicate that she consented
to sexual intercourse, John should have known that she was too incapacitated to
consent, the adjudicators concluded.

MacDonald continues:

In the
neo-Victorian worldview, however, females have no responsibility for their own
behavior, while the male is responsible not only for himself but for his
partner as well.

I am not as sure that this is a throwback to the Victorian
era. When females are deprived of responsibility for their own behavior, when
they are deprived of moral agency, we are not even talking about adult women.
We are treating adult women as though they were children. If anything it all
resembles a claim of statutory rape, a case where a child is assumed not to be
able to offer consent, even if he or she does.

Men are held criminally responsible, regardless of whether
they are criminally responsible. Women are infantilized to the point where they
cannot grant consent, even when they do..

Making it all into a large guilt trip will certainly dampen
the Dionysian revels that college students are wont to indulge. And yet, this
not quite the same thing as a return to modesty. Especially at a time when
radical feminists like Amanda Marcotte are declaring that sexting is now a
normal part of growing up.

It’s one thing to change customs and mores. It’s quite
another to write it all down, make it the law and to change it in courtrooms
and in extra-judicial proceedings.

It may be true that affirmative consent rules are the only way
to shut down the hookup culture. And yet, if men are going to be threatened and punished in the process, it is not entirely a good thing.

When those who so readily try to please interest groups for political reasons that they bastardize the law they only create disrespect for the law. The first link is an example that some lawyers are beginning to recognize where this kind of poor logic leads. I have to admit that this is in a long time where I have been impressed with anyone vaguely associated with Harvard. At some point the law schools at these universities are going to have to take a stand against such utter lawlessness. How can anyone possibly graduate future lawyers with this kind bastardization and politicalization? Law only survives if it represents the will of those who will be governed by it. These actions by the Obama administration will only damage our legal system more than it has been up to this point.

The second link points out that even women are starting to comment on the utter ridiculousness of feminist thought and trying to determine what is approval and what is not approval. This makes women look as too frail to make decisions in a responsible manner. One wonders if women, as defined by the above, should be trusted with jobs that require the ability to meet the challenges of a modern world?

Here's a thought: Are women strong enough to accept responsibility for their own actions? If not, why not? If they are not, shouldn't they go out only with a guardian? And should not they stay in a fortress for protection? Should they have ID cards to identify them as incompetent to go out by themselves?

The Sheep Nazi, I think "yes means yes" is a slightly different issue, although it can be considered as a reaction to the recent push to make colleges create witch trials to protect women's rights to make bad decisions.

But yes-means-yes laws in California are worth debating. Here's the women's side I guess:http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6952227/rape-culture-is-a-tax-on-women-CA-yes-means-yes-dierks-katz"But even if that weren't the case, the commentators' response would be misguided. The law didn't come out of nowhere. It emerged as a response to a status quo that has proved to be an all-too-powerful tool for sexual predators, because it enables them to claim to see consent in everything except continuous, unequivocal rejection. That status quo puts women in the position of having to constantly police their own behavior to make sure that they are not giving the appearance of passive consent. That's not only exhausting; it's limiting. It reinforces power imbalances that keep women out of positions of success and authority."

Somehow that argument reminds me of how a state legislative member inregards to lobbyists - you can say no to a lobbyist for 20 years, but if some small window of fear arises where you boyfriend (home team) is going to leave unless you putout (spend millions of tax money), every single no is voided, and you were not raped, you were merely swept off your feet by a pretty asshole.

Oh, back to women, and yes means yes, it seems better than nothing I guess, but you've still got the "low self-esteem women" who say yes because their boyfriend has other options, nothing is going to solve that game.